Epidemic Diseases and the Rise of Modern Architecture in the Philippines

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Издатель Mar 2, 2021

The colonization of the Philippine archipelago by the United States commenced at the turn-of-the-20th century. Infrastructure projects became an essential part of America’s modernization program, expanding imperial control throughout the Philippines.

In the process of territorial takeover, Manila as a new American colonial city would undergo massive urban and architectural transformation to restructure Manila’s urban built environment as a model colonial outpost, endowed with modernity. The American authorities generously deployed their resources and technological know-how to improve existing infrastructure and introduce urban strategies that assured a comfortable, healthy and secure settlement for the anticipated influx of American population. Charged with imperialist agenda, this urban overhaul was initiated not only to facilitate efficient colonial governance and to signify the power of the new colonial order but also to demonstrate the modernist tendencies of the regime, distinguished from the backwardness of the Spanish colonizers.

The initial years of American occupation were beleaguered by a succession of epidemic diseases – from bubonic plague to cholera -- all attributed to unhygienic domestic practices of the Filipinos at that time. Building ordinances were issued to prevent the outbreak and spread of diseases. In the context of Manila’s epidemic-stricken urban terrain, allegedly filthy native customs, habits, and spatial practices were singled out as the causes of the proliferation of various tropical diseases which threatened the equilibrium of the hygienic colonial order. A sweeping modernizing urban program was designed, conscripting the expertise of imperial physicians, sanitarians, planners, architects, and engineers with disciplinary strategies to “cure” the unhealthy colonial environment by excising its dangerous and disorderly elements and reforming the unwholesome native spatial practices. American colonial urbanism crafted the geometry of spatial regulation, instilling new disciplinary technologies by controlling social behaviors through indirect impositions encrypted in spatial and architectural forms.